Animated gifs in CoGe and Quartz Composer

05/15/2012

Animated gifs seems to be in renaissance in the last couple of years, its a popular format again. However, it seems to a not well supported format, or people just don't know how to use them in the live visuals/installations field, so here we go, just sharing my experience:

Tip of the day #1: Quartz Composer supports animated gifs.

Indeed, and in two different ways. First of all, you can access all the frames of an animated gif. To do that, simple load it with an Image Importer patch, and check on Extract All Images on the Inspector of the patch. This way the patch will create a structure type output, and you can access individual frames via Structure Index Member patches.

The second option is much more useful.

You can playback animated gifs as well! You just need to use them like video files, so load them with Movie Importer instead of Image Importer! The video below demonstrates the magic:

Tip of the day #2: CoGe supports animated gifs...

since the software uses Quartz Composer for media playback. You just need to use a Movie Player module for playback instead of a Still Image player. The best way is just set it up in Auto Player Select introduced in CoGe 1.2, the video below demonstrates this technique:

That's all. Thanks the great example gifs for Pixelnoizz! If you experience problems with this in Quartz Composer, you may need to install the good old Quicktime Player 7, haven't tested without it.